As someone who rarely flies when he isn’t either drunk or gripping the set in terror – yes, I have a Ph.D. in Astrophysics; what’s your point? — this scares the hell out of me.

You often need a crisis, real or imagined, to get major policy changes enacted. There are two looming challenges in our backwards and bureaucratic air traffic control system that might nudge Congress toward reform. The first is that the government system is having a hard time keeping up with the continued growth in air travel.

The second, as Government Executive magazine reports today, is that a large group of controllers are nearing retirement and the government might have a hard time finding replacements.

Privatizing sounds like a good idea. I’d sooner trust Google to guide my plane in than I’d trust the Post Office — even thought they did deliver Deathly Hallows on time.

One meme I’ve been hearing lately that’s driving me crazy goes like so:

“Democrats are too intellectual. They’re too focused on the details of policy. They need to make more emotional appeals to people!”

In fact, there’s now a best-selling book on this subject.

It’s utter crap.

Every election cycle, seniors are told Republicans are going to “gut” Social Security and Medicare. When the GOP took Congress in 1994, we were told they were going to pollute the air, dirty the water and cancel school lunches. Dick Gebhardt specifically appeared in a school to respond to Newt’s address and said that Republican had voted to cut school lunches (they hadn’t). In 2000, a commercial implied that if Bush was elected, blacks would be dragged to death in hate crimes.

Yep, cool rational consideration.

An enormous amount of Democrat rhetoric is about the rich “paying their fair share”. Their reponse to ending the Estate Tax is to lament “a tax cut for Paris Hilton”. Fight against imminent domain abuses have run into the claim that this is to “benefit the rich.”

Boy, so cerebral. I feel like I’m reading Tolstoy!

In 1988, the Dems told us we were “a pink slip away from being homeless” (this was before we discovered that rational, number-crunching Democrats had over-estimated homelessness by a small factor of 400%). In 1992, we were told we were a pink slip away from losing our healthcare. In 2004, we were an election away from our jobs going to India.

Uh-huh. Boy, what boring numbers fanatics. It’s like listening to philosophy professors debate.

Was it cold reason when the Democrats told us that 2004 was the most critical election in American History – that our very lives were at stake? (Personally, I might say 1864 was more important. Or 1800. Or 1796. Or 1940. Or 1968. Or 1980. Or…)

Is it mind-numbing number-crunching that makes them rally behind the WHO’s bullshit numbers?

And I’m sure they seek endorsements from Hollywood celebrities because of the immense intellectual prowess of these people.

In fact, the biggest problem with getting global warming taken seriously is the use of bogus, hysterical claims designed to frighten people into thinking The Day After Tomorrow is a serious insight into our future.

Let’s just look at macro-economic issues. Here are some reasonable things that Democrats dispute. These are things that almost all economists will agree on:

And yet, not only to the Democrats dispute these things, they do so for irrational reasons, with their rhetoric on the issues being:

And that brings me to my final point. Since December of 2000, the reasonable, rational cerebral Democratic party has been consumed with hatred of George W. Bush. No matter what he does, it’s wrong. Even if it’s an education bill Ted Kennedy wrote and the greatest expansion of socialized medicine in 40 years, it’s wrong and evil.

Party of Reason? Give me break. The last reasonable Democrat was Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

Yes, the GOP appeals to emotions a lot of times — unfortunately a lot more often with the twerps we have in charge now. But just because one side uses emotions does not mean the other side uses logic and reason.

The enemy of my enemy is not my friend. And opposing irrational people does not make you rational.

Sully links to this note on how the GOP is abusing the filibuster.

I’ll agree, the GOP is going overboard on the filibuster, adopting a bizarre scorched earth policy. But note this text on the graphic:

“The longest and most notorious filibusters were against bills on civil rights, voting rights and school busing.”

The problem: they fail to mention that it was their beloved Democrats who performed the record filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Granted ,a number of them subsequently fled and were unfortunately brought into the GOP. But the clear implication that the GOP was behind the Civil Rights filibuster is staggering.

Even when they have something legitimate to criticize the GOP about, the media can’t resist twisting and turning the facts like a twisty turny thing.

Now I can’t say that I’m completely against what the GOP is doing here – the Dems have 12 years of stupid liberal legislation constipation to try to defecate out. But there is a veto pen, you know.

You think I was a Commie Fag Junkie before? Well, hold on to your hats because I’m with Hillary on the withdrawal business. It’s perfectly reasonable for a United State Senator and Presidential front-runner to ask about withdrawal plans. And it is absolutely deplorable for an Undersecretary of Defense to chide her like a child. And absolutely predictable given the way this President is determined to politicize the entire engine of government.

Yeah, I know. The Right hates Hillary so anything bad is justified. Wrong. They know damned well that if President Clinton’s pentagon had done this to a GOP senator asking about Kosovo, they would have gone crazy.

I realize this is becoming too fine a distrinction for the mindless anti-Democrats who are Bush’s only remaining supporters. But the Undersecretary of Defense is not a political office. They are not in the business of supporting the President’s decisions and defending his actions. They are not supposed to be “on message”. Their job is carrying out his orders and leave the politics out of it. And if Hillary becomes President, their job will be to carry out her orders.

This is getting ridiculous

A great take on the doling out of laptops to third world kids. The money spent on this could have cleaned up their water or gone into genmod crops to keep them well-fed. But we decided porn was a priority.